Psychological Disorders

The title of the movie that is to be analyzed is Donnie Darko. The psychological disorder associated with the movie is paranoid schizophrenia. Donnie Darko is a film about a schizophrenic teenager living in Middlesex, Virginia who one day wakes up to be led into sleepwalking by a new imaginary friend, Frank. Frank, who appears in a menacing rabbit costume, manipulates Donnie into doing destructive, violent things, and his influence increases more and more throughout the movie.
According to the DSM-IV, schizophrenia is a persistent, often chronic and usually serious mental disorder affecting a variety of aspects of behavior, thinking, and emotion. It also states that thinking may be disconnected and illogical. Notes from class also show that symptoms of the disorder are hallucinations, delusions, and garbled speech. While those symptoms are true of schizophrenia, the only apparent symptoms shown in the film are hallucinations, and delusion. With Frank’s presence in Donnie’s life becoming more and more influential, Donnie takes more risks, is generally angrier about things, and seems to not care about consequences.
The first indication of Donnie’s schizophrenia is when he wakes up at 8 minutes and 38 seconds into the movie. He hears Frank’s voice, and it tells him to come closer. This hallucination forces Donnie to sleepwalk, and actually ends up saving his life, because while he was gone, a piece of a plane crashed through his house’s roof, right through his bedroom where he would’ve been sleeping. This is an example of a hallucination, which is the main symptom of schizophrenia. This voice becomes the main source of his hallucinations throughout the rest of the movie as well.
A different symptom of schizophrenia that affected Donnie was change in behavior. He became more aggressive and reckless. This first shows when he floods the school and vandalizes the statue and area around the statue. His therapist later states that Donnie’s aggressive behavior stems...